You Can't Win

by Jack Black

Before my twentieth birthday, I was in the dock of a criminal court, on trial for burglary. I was acquitted, but that is another story. In six years I had deserted my father and home, gone on the road. I had become a snapper-up of small things, a tapper of tills, a street-door sneak thief, a prowler of cheap lodging houses, and at last a promising burglar in a small way.

At twenty-five I was an expert house burglar, a nighttime prowler, carefully choosing only the best homes — homes of the wealthy, careless, insured people. I “made” them in the small hours of the night, always under arms.

thirty I was a respected member of the “yegg” brotherhood, a thief of which little is known. He is silent, secretive, wary; forever traveling, always a night “worker.” He shuns the bright lights, seldom straying far from his kind, never coming to the surface. Circulating through space with his always-ready automatic, the yegg rules the underworld of criminals. At forty I found myself a solitary, capable journ...

I had very few glasses of wine as I traveled this route. I rarely saw a woman smile and seldom heard a song. In those twenty-five years I took all these things, and I am going to write about them.

I followed the gray man to the hotel. Presently the trunk was left in front and I went to inspect it. It was a leather trunk, with brass fittings, plastered over with stickers from many hotels and steamship lines. It was scratched and battered and travel-stained. The thing fascinated me. I stood around and felt it, read the stickers, some of them from foreign parts of the world, and wondered what kind of man he could be that possessed such a wonderful trunk. I was restless and disturbed when the porter took it upstairs and out of my sight. It had roused strange thoughts and longings in my mind that I did not understand then. I know now that it suggested travel, adventure by land and sea — the world.

now pulled my hat down from the back of my head and wore it properly. I straightened up, kept my hands out of my pockets, walked with a quick step, and assumed a confident, positive manner. I even began to think about a mustache, bristly, cut down like the gray man’s. I must have a gray suit, gray hat, gloves, and a leather trunk. A big problem for a boy with no income.

The possession of three dollars changed me at once. I became independent, confident, secure.

Those were his last words to me. They were kind, and I have always remembered them and their ring of fatality. I never saw him again. I learned later that he lived out his life orderly and died decently. He went away the next day, and when he returned I was far away, westbound in search of adventure.

These conventions, like many others, were merely an excuse for a big drunk. Sometimes they would end in a killing, or some drunken bum would fall in the fire and get burned to death, after which they would silently steal away. Oftener, the convention lasted till there was no more money for alcohol, the bums’ favorite drink. The bums then began “pestering the natives” by begging and stealing till the whole town got sore.

“Oh, sure,” he grouched. “Everything’s all right — just like Denmark.”

The patrons of the wine dumps were recruited from every walk of life. Scholars, quoting Greek and Latin poets, lawyers dissecting Blackstone, writers with greasy rolls of manuscript fraternized with broken bums from the road, sailors too old for the sea, and scrapped mechanics from the factories — all under the lash of alcohol. They sat in groups at the tables drinking the wine, alcohol in its cheapest and deadliest form, from every conceivable kind of vessel: tin cans, pewter mugs, beer glasses, stems, and cracked soup bowls — anything unbreakable that the boss could buy from a junkman. They talked volubly. They seldom laughed and never fought — too far gone for laughing or fighting. When they could drink no more or buy no more, they staggered or crawled to a bare space on the floor in the back of the room where they lay on their backs in a row with their heads to the wall, each with his hat over his hideous, bloated, purple face. The porter-cook-wino watched the sleepers carefully. When he thought they had “slept it off” enough to stand up, he roughly kicked them to their feet and herded them out into the streets to beg, borrow, or steal enough small silver for another bout. Too often they failed to respond to his kicks; he would lift the battered hat, take one look at the purple-blue face, and ring for the morgue wagon. This pitiful crew, gathered from the four corners of the earth and from every stratum of society, whipped beyond resistance by that mysterious and irres...

“He got my plant, Georgie,” said the first one, “but you saved yours, didn’t you, Georgie? Gee, Georgie, but you’re a fox.” His tones were honey.

Georgie said to his partner. “I think we’d better cook up a shot just to see if the stuff is all right. That Finnerty would peddle you chloride of lime if he happened to run out of ‘morph.’” This seemed to be a very rational reason for taking another shot, and they did.

Given a sufficient quantity of hop, no fiend is ever at a loss for a sound reason for taking a jolt of it. If he is feeling bad he takes a jolt so he will feel good. If he is feeling good, he takes one to make him feel better, and if he is feeling neither very bad nor very good he takes a jolt “just to get himself straightened around.”

In my experience with the Chinese I have found them charitable, frugal, thrifty, moral, and honest.

The late William A. Pinkerton was responsible for its changed meaning. His business consisted largely of asking questions and necessarily he acquired much misinformation.

Salt Chunk Mary’s bankroll had no bottom, and her constitution was flawless. So it followed that her periods of relaxation were somewhat extended. Being a very positive-minded person, inclining to action rather than words, her procedure at these times differed greatly from the ordinary. When she “went on a toot” the town marshal went fishing or hunting, and her more timid business rivals closed their places and remained in a state of siege like storekeepers in Chinatown when a tong war was declared. It was her custom to visit her friends’ places first, where friendships were renewed and emphasized by much spending and drinking, and where obligations were acknowledged and discharged promptly. She poured liquor into the bums, beggars, ragtags, and bobtails that hung around the saloons till they were legless drunk, and unable to follow her triumphal march through the town. She never let up for the want of money, nor because of inability to “carry her licker.” Her jamboree closed when she had “made” the last place in town and that was always the joint of some one she held a grudge against.

The miners were orderly, hard workers, deep drinkers, and fair fighters.

In rare instances the broken thief finds friends, sympathetic, understanding, and ready to help him. Strong and kindly hands at his elbows ease him over the hard spots and direct him to some useful place in the world. Some understand such kindness and respond by breasting the current and battling upstream with their best strokes; others do not, or can not understand, and, like dead fish, float down and away forever.

After a few minutes I crawled over to it, and, pulling myself up, stretched out, more dead than alive. If people can be corrected by cruelty I would have left that cell a saint.

There was drinking, fast and furious, eating, washing, shaving, while some of the older bums mended their clothes with expert needle. Cripples discarded their crutches and hopped about the camp fires grotesquely. “Crawlers” with cut-off legs swung themselves along on their hands drunkenly, like huge toads.

Each day the bums drank more and ate less. The cooks were drunk and would prepare no food. The fiery alcohol had done its work. The bums that could stand up were fighting or snapping and snarling at each other. Many lay on their backs helpless, glass-eyed and open-mouthed, while others crawled about on all fours like big spiders. No more laughter, songs or recitations. Gloom settled over the camp and Tragedy waited in the wings for his cue to stalk upon the stage.

The place was a big loft. The foggy air was hot, stifling, and laden with every Chinese smell — opium, tobacco, fish, and damp clothes drying. Chinamen were cooking, eating, smoking hop, gambling, or sleeping in curtained bunks that lined the walls. My conductor was evidently a considerable person. Silence fell on the room, and many Chinamen stood still in submissive attitudes.

sat by the stove and watched the scene with interest. An old Chinaman — he must have been sixty — shuffled by me hastily with a hop layout and spread it in a near-by bunk. He was shaking with the “yen yen,” the hop habit. His withered, clawlike hands trembled as he feverishly rolled the first “pill,” a large one. His burning eyes devoured it. Half cooked, he stuck the pill in its place and turning his pipe to the lamp greedily sucked the smoke into his lungs. Now, with a long, grateful exhalation, the smoke is discharged, the cramped limbs relax and straighten out, the smoker heaves a sigh of satisfaction, and the hands, no longer shaking, turn with surer touch to another “pill.” This is smaller, rolled and shaped with more care, better cooked, and inhaled with a slow “long draw.” Each succeeding pill is smaller, more carefully browned over the lamp, and smoked with increased pleasure. At last the little horn container, the “hop toy,” is empty. The last pill is finished with perfect stroke and flourish, the bamboo pipe is put aside with caressing touch, the lamp blown out with gentle breath, and the devotee, sighing softly, curls himself up for pleasant dreams.

took his property coolly, impersonally, as a picker removes the feathers from a fat goose. I returned his papers as the last touch to a workmanlike job, as the cabinetmaker softly gives the last nail its last light tap.

would not be fair to the reader for me to attempt a detailed description of this flogging. In writing these chronicles I have tried to be fair, reasonable, and rational, and rather than chance misleading anybody by overstating the case I will touch only the high points and leave out the details. No hangman can describe an execution where he has officiated. The best he can do is to describe his end of it, and you have but a onesided case. The man at a whipping post or tripod can’t relate all the details of his beating fully and fairly. He can’t see what’s going on behind him, and that’s where most of the goings-on are. Furthermore, he does not approach the subject with that impersonal, detached mental attitude so necessary to correct observing and reporting. Mentally he is out of focus, and his perspective is blurred.

English prison warden would not believe a prison could exist without peas. I never saw a pea in an American prison. I never saw a cup of coffee in the place. We had pea “coffee” twice a day. It was made from peas grown on the farm, threshed out on the barn floors with flails, roasted and ground like coffee. It was very nutritious and not at all unpalatable. We had plenty of vegetables, mush and pea soup, lots of bread, not too fresh, and not much meat. The food ration, even to the salt and pepper that seasoned it, was regulated by law. Every prisoner got just what the law allowed him and no more. We always had good appetites, never quite had them satisfied, had no smoking tobacco, no coffee, very little meat, and plenty of sleep — the hospital was always empty and there was not a death in the prison in my two years’ time there.

The place was clean and well ventilated. We had coarse, warm clothing, enough blankets, plenty of light, lots of good books, and nothing to distract us when reading. I never saw a bug, flea, or mosquito while there. The guards were not brutal or overbearing. I never saw one strike a prisoner; I never saw a prisoner strike a guard.

There was no hurry about anything; it was a fine day; I had my liberty. I bought some tobacco and papers at a near-by store and lay down on the warm ground in the green grass under the Indian summer sun to think it over, take stock, and look to the future. This would be a good place for me to say that I would have quit stealing then if the terrible lashing hadn’t embittered me and sent me out looking for revenge, but that would not be the truth.

Each of us must be tempered in some fire. Nobody had more to do with choosing the fire that tempered me than myself, and instead of finding fault with the fire I give thanks that I had the metal to take the temper and hold it.

Reader, I’ll ask you if you wouldn’t take a jolt of booze or hop after an experience such as this?

Yes, reader, you went down the street and into a restaurant where you ate heartily. Then to bed for a good, healthy, sound sleep. Not me! I went back to the hop joint.

Yes reader, I know what you say to yourself now. You are saying: “Well, he doesn’t have to go to the hop joint this time.” You are right. I didn’t have to go, but I went just the same. The opium smoker can always find a good excuse for an extra smoke. I went to the joint to celebrate my changed fortune and to propitiate whatever deformed deity it is that is supposed to look after the luck of a burglar. I must have propitiated to some purpose, for within a week another stroke of dumb luck more than doubled my bankroll, and I decided to take a lay-off.

My observations and experience have convinced me that the drug habit like most of our other habits, is largely mental. In another chapter I shall submit a few facts in support of this opinion.

Kansas City had nothing of interest for me now, and I left it, never to return. A cheap excursion ticket took me back west to the town of Los Angeles, where I finished the winter, fraternizing with the bums and yeggs from the road, polishing up old acquaintances, and gathering gossip from the four quarters of the underworld.

Spring came. For me that me...

I’m not finding fault with these brave days of jungle music, synthetic liquor, and dimple-kneed maids, and anybody that thinks the world is going to the bowwows because of them ought to think back to San Francisco or any other big city of twenty years ago — when train conductors steered suckers against the bunko men; when coppers located “work” for burglars and stalled for them while they worked; when pickpockets paid the police so much a day for “exclusive privileges” and had to put a substitute “mob” in their district if they wanted to go out of town to a country fair for a week. Those were the days when there were saloons by the thousand; when the saloonkeeper ordered the police to pinch the Salvation Army for disturbing his peace by singing hymns in the street; when there were race tracks, gambling unrestricted, crooked prize fights; when there were cribs by the mile and hop joints by the score. These things may exist now, but if they do, I don’t know where. I knew where they were then, and with plenty of money and leisure I did them all.

In due time I was sentenced to eight years at Folsom. The case went on appeal to the supreme court and I settled down for a long wait in the old Broadway county jail. My case gave me food for much interesting thought. I was guilty. Justice had overtaken me. But let us see how justice fared. It seemed to me that the blind goddess got a tough deal herself. Everybody connected with the case outraged her. The first judge took money. The coppers framed me in. The witnesses perjured themselves. The second judge was so feloniously righteous that he stood in with the framing. My lawyer was a receiver of stolen goods — even stole some from me. And the police told me that the Jewelers’ Association beat them out of the reward. That’s one side of the case; here’s another. The jeweler was bankrupt. The Canadian authorities spent ten thousand dollars. The state of California had to feed and clothe me while I was in prison. Here’s another side of it. Spokane and his wife died of T. B. that he contracted while in jail and “justice” overtook Irish Annie for what she had done to me. Not very pleasant reflections; especially when I had to admit to myself that I was the cause of everything from the burglary to the punishment of Annie, and all that happened in between them. Yet this burglary is by no means unique. It frequently happens that the initial loss in dollars and cents is as nothing compared to the wrong and injury that radiate from such crimes like ripples on a pond.

My three months passed quickly enough and I was released, still feeling the effects of the jacket. When I got out I held up my hand and swore I would never make another friend or do another decent thing. I borrowed a gun and got money. I returned to Folsom by stealth and flooded the place with hop. I went about the country for months with but one thing in my mind, a sort of vicious hatred of everybody and everything. As much as possible I shunned even my own kind — thieves.

paid the landlady a month’s rent and told her I was a sick man and would be in my room all the time and not to disturb me.

had been using opium steadily for ten years. For ten years I had never gone to sleep without taking it. I owed to it all the sleep, all the rest and forgetfulness and contentment I had had in that time. Now I made up my mind to quit. Right away I found I had to pay back every second of sleep, every quiet, restful moment I had got from the opium in the whole ten years. I was taking about five grains a day. I began to taper down slowly. I cut off a grain a week at the start, then for a couple of months I took only three grains a day. It would have been a good deal harder to quit if I hadn’t had that fear of the jail always before me. That took my mind off the opium. The worst hold the drug gets on a man is the mental hold. It becomes a mental habit. A man has to keep a hard grip on his mind; he has to want to quit, first, and keep wanting to quit all the time, then he can do it. I could stick the daytime out. I found something to do; I read, or ate, or walked around the room. I did not dare go out in the daytime, for fear I would be recognized by the police or by some stool pigeon. This worry was always on my mind, and in a way it helped, because while I was thinking of that I was not thinking about the opium.

Hundreds of times it was just that memory that tipped the balance, and I would take only what I had allowed myself, no more. I believe now I quit because he said that to me. I felt that if I could not do that much, and it was the only thing he ever asked me to do, I wasn’t worthy of the friendship of such a man as he had shown himself to be.

Then I would get up and drench myself with whisky and wash it down with absinthe. My room looked like a cross between a drug store and a distillery. I had bottles of tonics, invalid’s port wine, whisky and absinthe. I would take a drink out of every bottle in the room and fall down on the bed or on the floor in a stupor and sleep for a few hours. In this manner I stuck it out. I took a small portion of hop each evening, reducing it daily according to the system I planned. Finally I got to the stage where I could skip one day’s portion and get two hours’ natural sleep.

went to a little park where it was quiet and lay on the grass. It was so good to touch and smell the grass again that I couldn’t get enough of it. It seemed to me that grass was the most beautiful thing in the world. I felt as though I could eat it.

lay there in the sunshine and ran my hands through it and pulled a blade or two and chewed it. I had not been in the sunshine nor been able to touch anything green and growing for over six years. I wouldn’t have spoiled that lawn, put a cigarette stub or an orange peel on it for anything in the world. After that I went out three or four afternoons a week and lay on that grass in the park. I could feel that I was getting stronger, I could eat with good appetite, and every night I decreased the opium according to my schedule. I finally got the dose down to an eighth of a grain.

It took me six months to get the dose down to nothing. Even then for months more the thing might jump out at me at any minute, like a wild beast and tear me to pieces. I would go half crazy for the time, I would be mad to get hold of some hop. But that would last only a few hours, and every time I got through it safe I knew it would be easier next time.

I’m not strong for eating in swell places, but I do like quick contrasts. I had my breakfast in San Quentin, so why not lunch at the Palace?

In thirteen years I have learned to work — some day I may learn to like it.

Fremont Older has been a rock in a weary land to me, and Judge Dunne has been a shelter in the time of storm.

wish I could sift out a few grains of wisdom from my life that would help people to help prisoners, and help prisoners to help themselves, but I can’t find them. I don’t know. All I can say with certainty is that kindness begets kindness, and cruelty begets cruelty. You can make your choice and reap as you sow.